Neighbourhoods

Helping young people locate themselves

The other day I had the chance to tag along with what might have looked like just a bunch of loosely-supervised youngsters wandering about in the countryside. It happened to be one of the most impressive social inclusion projects I've ever seen.

On this particular day they were geocaching near the River Yare and finding out how the woodlands are managed, how the river is used, how lanes have changed over centuries, and so on.

There were half a dozen young people in care, aged between about 13 and 19 - at least one of them in a residential home, the others having varied histories with foster carers. Through the youth council and the museums service they were involved in a week-long programme of events exploring how the Norfolk countryside has changed as a consequence or cause of social change.

The project began last Monday with the participants viewing a series of dioramas at Norwich Museum, which represent recognisable Norfolk scenes. None of the dioramas features any human beings. One of them shows the wildlife on the marshland around the coast at Blakeney, a village which has grown around a number of cottages built from the local flint.

Visiting Blakeney themselves, the young people spent time reflecting on the kinds of people who would have lived there in the past, their livelihoods based on fishing; and on the kinds of people who live there now (the house prices are an indicator of the now-classic scenario in which less-affluent local people who have looked after their local environment for centuries are abruptly priced out of their area). I understand that there is little or no fishing based in Blakeney now, but there is a tourist industry based on seal-watching from nearby Blakeney Point. There are insights here about human involvement in the changing environment, which were readily absorbed and discussed by the young participants through the week.

Another of the dioramas features a 'loke', which is a regional term for a country lane enclosed on both sides by vegetation. Lokes would have been used heavily over the centuries, often marking parish boundaries, and might well have sunk gradually below the level of adjacent fields.

While I was there on Thursday, two or three geocaches were traced in lokes, and I was struck by the young people's appetite for knowledge about wildlife and landscape even while a series of treasure-hunting games was being played. When I was their age, me and my mates would have been relentless in our determination to disrupt the entire process, and I for one would have learned nothing.

All the same, I found the ease with which they mastered global positioning technology too much of a contrast with the difficulties these young people have faced and will continue to face in locating themselves. Unlike their settled peers, they are ceaselessly navigating through many uncertainties.

The subtle excellence of this project is worth dwelling on, at the start of national adoption week. They're still too rare, but you can find initiatives like this in the public sector - it might be through sports and leisure, museums, libraries, youth services or wherever - often with little recognition and against excessive management constraints. It takes exceptional people working in partnership with other committed individuals, all well beyond the call of duty, to bend those constraints and pull off this kind of programme. The benefits to the young people are almost tangible, but try telling that to the politicians and accountants.

As in previous work where I've been talking to young people looked after, I was struck by their easy readiness to talk among themselves (even though in most cases they had not met before) about the experience of being looked after. Much of the time they feel so different to other kids and cannot share that experience, so these occasions are particularly valuable, liked cached treasure.

It was enchanting to listen in on a conversation about globalisation and capitalism as we took our lunch on benches in a church porch (in modest reference to the protest outside St Paul's). And it's striking how sensitive they are to how others might be feeling. Mainly towards the other youngsters around them, but also to the adults. As soon as I joined them in the minibus I was offered sweets and as we wandered round I was twice asked by one lad I'd barely met 'You alright Kevin?' Yes, I most definitely was. I don't earn much doing what I do, but I have some extraordinary privileges.

Plant swap

I've not come across this before, what promiscuity -

The conservatory in Broomfield Park is staffed by volunteers during the summer it is open every Wednesday and Sunday from 2.30 4.30pm

Plant Swap Sunday 23 October

Bring a garden plant to swap or, it you do not have anything to bring, there will be plants available so you can give a donation instead.

From the Bowes and Bounds site in north London.

 

Obesity? Diabetes? Move to a better neighbourhood

We know that neighbourhood characteristics influence health but we don't know quite how or how much. Here's a study which used a random lottery to give selected low income families a voucher to move to a less-impoverished neighbourhood. Apparently it shows that

'low-income women with children who move from high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhoods experience notable long-term improvements in some aspects of their health, namely reductions in diabetes and extreme obesity.'

Yes I think so too, it would be a good idea to start eradicating neighbourhoods characterised by extreme poverty in the first place. I can see how doing that might reduce poor health and therefore costs to the taxpayer.

It would be nice not to need studies like this, but in the meantime it's important to have the evidence. And I like the idea of the randomised study.

 

Locally global

Facebook fans amongst customers of a furniture store in Belgium are allowed exclusive use of a number of parking places at the company's stores. Will those who can't find a space go home and sign up, or go elsewhere for their stuff?

I guess the idea could become quite interesting if it gets generalised to local traders in a specific place; or if it were adopted in the public sector - a leisure centre for instance?

Right now, I'm curious to know whether the basic point is appreciated by all the prats who argued a few years ago that digital technologies meant the death of distance and that the local was no longer relevant.

 

Local Level

The Local Level website, where I try to earn a little income, has had a complete overhaul, over here. Huge thanks to my colleague Martin Dudley who has done most of the techtweaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping an eye on surveillance

"CCTV usually achieves very little on its own, it needs to be part of more comprehensive security planning; it works much better in access-managed areas along with a guardianship presence, community support and a response capacity.

Policing, security and crime prevention are social relationships and if these are characterised mainly by division, mistrust and inequality, CCTV surveillance technologies are likely to exacerbate social problems and tensions."

Peter Squires, University of Brighton, in a European Urban Knowledge Network interview.

20 per cent of us don't want neighbours to handle our post

Here's a dilemma for the postal services which policy makers need to acknowledge. According to recent research carried out by Consumer Focus, one in five people are unhappy for any of their neighbours to receive any of their post.

Royal Mail have proposals to leave undeliverable items with neighbours as a matter of policy (it happens already but is not standard practice, it seems).

'For non-signature items, if the neighbour is at home and accepts the item the postman will deliver a notification card to the addressee. This will detail the address of the neighbour.'

Taking in deliveries for a neighbour is widespread practice and has obvious advantages, being more efficient and lubricating local interaction. Where I live it happens a lot. I've pointed out before that it's one of relatively few ways in which older people, often at home when others are out, can play a simple, valued, trusted neighbourly role.

But if you don't get on with or even recognise your neighbours, or are particularly sensitive about the content of some of your post, you might at least want to have a choice about whether the Royal Mail takes this course. Eighty per cent of respondents thought they should be able to opt in or opt out of having a neighbour receive their post.

If Royal Mail go ahead with their proposals, it will go against the sensitivities of a sizeable minority. Note the lack of specificity in the research finding - 20% don't want any neighbour to handle any of their post. But if they pander to that minority, they contribute further to the undermining of the role of the neighbour and the aspirations of modern governments to increase local social capital.

So how hard would it be to systematise the preference for receipt of undeliverable post by a neighbour? Not something that should be beyond our uses of technology, I think. And if that happens, and we all start to register one way or the other on a database evidencing trust in our neighbours, what a fascinating dataset we'll have.

There is a little discussion about this issue following an apparently pseudonymous Guardian Comment is Free article (written by someone with inside knowledge - a postal worker perhaps? - who has yet to discover that some neighbours are female - ah so it can't be a postal worker then).

Sources of local information

Almost two thirds of American adults use at least three different types of media every week to get news and information about their local community, according to the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Fifteen per cent of them rely on at least six different kinds of media weekly. Broadcast sources still dominate: 74 per cent say they get local information at least weekly from a local tv news broadcast and/or the website of their local tv news station. The figures for radio and newspapers are 51 and 50 per cent.

Only fifty-five per cent of adults say they 'get local information weekly or more often via word of mouth, from family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors' which is fairly disappointing since as a species we've had quite a lot of practice and the technological barriers are mostly manageable. Nonetheless, for 14 of the 16 local topics asked about, the survey found that word of mouth was the fourth most cited source or higher — usually ahead of radio.

The researchers have made a valiant attempt to keep categories clear and allow comparisons to be made, but the whole field of community information has always been hard to systematise. For example, the interpretation of 'local' is usually open; and the influence of a serendipitous information ecology, and the effect of push on pull, are enormously difficult to distinguish methodologically. Word of mouth is given significance but the survey questions don't distinguish personal emails or texts (presumably these count as 'word of mouth' in the way that informing someone by telephone might do).

The most striking finding seems at first sight to be this:

'41% of all adults can be considered “local news participators” because they contribute their own information via social media and other sources, add to online conversations, and directly contribute articles about the community'

- but this is not what it seems. The category of “local news participators” includes, somewhat generously, people who say that they 'share links to local stories or videos online with others' for example, or those who 'have commented on local news stories or blogs they read online'.

All the same, the survey finds that eight per cent of all adults (10 per cent of internet users) 'contribute to online discussions or message boards about their community.' Expect this figure to increase; and expect the Pew Research Center to be the ones to identify that increase as it happens.